Fresh Content – a Positive SEO Ranking Factor or Not?

Here is what the SEO pros will tell you about publishing new content to influence your SEO results

(They mostly talk about Google, and so will I because we all know that Google is the absolute king when it comes to keyword searches and page rankings – sorry Yahoo!, Ask and MSN/Bing – I do respect your rules and your presence in the market, it’s just that it seems that once you master Google, everything else is kind of… easy.):

1. Google loves fresh content.

No wonder it always pushes both blogs and news sites up the ranks of its search engine resultÂ pages – because they get new content updates every single day.

Content comes in many forms and types – new product pages, new press releases, new blogs posts, new datasheets, new events, etc. And here is the place to mention that unique content is what counts. Unique as in not “borrowed”, “copy-pasted from another source” or ” in the form of a series of keywords stacked together without much logic behind”.

2. Why new content pages need to be aligned with your overall business strategy

SearchEngineLand.com, will be the first to tell you that you should not be adding new pages just because you have to. Unless you have a clear plan regarding your new page – which should be part of your company-wide strategy anyway – creating pages willy-nilly won’t do you much good. Remember, every website has to have a well-defined taxonomy to get its sleek, logical and easy-to-navigate structure. This taxonomy is built primarily on the keywords that your potential buyers will use to search for your products, services, or expertise.

The way search works

The search engines have to have a way to match what you are offering with what your potential buyers are searching for. And the way it works is through matched keywords. So if you are in the business of selling TEA, obviously your main keyword will be ‘tea’. For every product that you sell, you will have additional product pages that will be built around keywords meant to augment and extend your main keyword: black tea, jasmine tea, oolong tea, tea in bulk, individually-packed tea, etc.

When you build your website based on this logical structure, you are helping the search engines to understand what you are competing for and where you want to be. This way, if a customer is looking for jasmine tea, Google will know that it has to serve your ‘Jasmine tea’ page to the online buyer to make them happy and get them to find what they are looking for, and fast.

3. How, when, and how often to create new content

Many businesses complain that they have nothing new to share and that it’s difficult to come up with new content. Adding and updating content needs to be part of a company’s daily life. Getting in the habit of documenting, keeping track of and publishing the wealth of information that your business produces (and that can be made publicly available) is

Adding and updating content needs to be part of a company’s daily life. Getting in the habit of documenting, keeping track of, and publishing the wealth of the information that your business generates (and that can be made publicly available) is best practice that will lead to many positive developments, including, but not limited to higher search engine rankings, better brand performance, stronger influence and reputation growth, etc.

So don’t be shy and post everything that you can – your latest news updates, a recent (positive) customer feedback, a white paper that has just been released, or a presentation that has been repurposed. Got into a new partnership? Write about it. Added a new feature to your product? Share it on your website.

4. They say that cats have 9 lives. Well, the same goes for content.

Every digital marketing pro will tell you that you have to repurpose content. Why? Because different people prefer different communication media to get to the content that they are looking for. Some like PDF documents, others prefer email, a third group would go with video, a fourth might decide that they like PPT presentation format.

The idea of repurposing is simple. If you want to reach all of your prospects, you need to cater to their communication needs. That’s why it is not only ok, it is a MUST to repurpose content.

5. Why fresh content is good for your search engine popularity

The frequency of your website content updates is related to how often you want the search bots to crawl your website.

It seems that the more frequently the bots visit your website, the better it is for you and your rankings, so try to add new content (blogs, pictures, or even whole new landing pages) as often as it is reasonably possible. If you are running new marketing and sales campaigns every single month (which you should be doing anyway), then you have plenty of new content to create, repurpose and publish. And Google will love you.

Â The more new content you create, the larger your online presence will become.

More and more people will be able to find you online, and will probably link to your articles, case studies, e-guides, or other information that they find useful. And that is what you want. Backlinks are so important for rank optimization.

6. Why backlinks are a great thing, and should be at the forefront of your SEO efforts.

The logic behind the need to get more backlinks is straightforwardÂ – you know how in ancient Greece, every time a town official wanted to pass a new law or make a change that would affect the citizens’ lives, he had to get the people to vote for him?

Well, Google works the same way. If you want to build authority and get to become popular on the search engine result pages, you need to get people to vote for you. In the world of today, a vote is represented by a backlink. And a backlink is created when someone copies the URL address of your article or page and pastes it in a page on their own website. As simple as that. The world’s most influential companies have tens of thousandsÂ of backlinks.

Because it is hard to generate backlinks in a legitimate way (there are a lot of “black SEO” techniques that might sound tempting, but frequently misfire when it comes to this important element of optimization, so I don’t recommend you do that), the experts usually advise you to create more content. Or to update your content with new, fresh information.

7. So yes, new content is CRITICAL to your SEO status.

A few more bits and pieces that I wanted to add

If you want to add fresh images, don’t forget to update their titles/”alt” tags. Text included in images will not be read by the search engines. For example, if you create a beautiful collage featuring a clever advertising statement that contains some of your keywords (which is then saved neatly as an image – a .jpg or .png format – and published on your website), do not count on the search engines to take notice and “index” your keywords. They cannot “read” images like people do.

Adding new videos is really a good way to keep visitors longer, and definitely counts as new content. Create videos from product presentations, demos, or customer webinars. Get in the habit of recording 10-20 second videos – they are easy to do and can be a very good source of website visits and backlinks. If you don’t have the bandwidth to play them smoothly from your website server, then definitely publish them on YouTube.com and then embed them on your site. YouTube will give you more exposure, as well as the ability to choose appropriate search tags for your video.

And last, but not least: word of caution regarding duplicate content: If you have live duplicate content on your website, bear in mind that search engines don’t really like web properties that maintain published copies of the same content. That might affect negatively your rankings.

Conclusion

New or fresh content is the best way to gain popularity, improve brand awareness, build influence, and climb up the search engine rankings. An SEO strategy does not exist separately from your overall company strategy. It is inherently linked to your sales, marketing, services, support, and content business objectives.

SEO starts with a keyword, but that’s just because keywords are the search engines’ currency. Content – whether textual or visual is at the center of the whole mechanism of page and domain ranking, so it should be a top priority for any business that wants to grow their online presence in a smart and effective way.